I rarely dream. What I find really wicked is when I'm so tired that I fall asleep with my eyes open. Wild! Scares the crap out of people!

Dreams are not reliable, and I know this because I have a PhD after my name. Just kidding I'm not a doctor, there is no scientific evidence to prove that dreams help with repressed memories. (You can google this) However, not following your therapist's advice, "not a good idea".

If you don't agree with the type of therapy your getting, there are other types to choose from. Following your gut instinct would be the best approach when choosing a therapist, and their methods of helping you heal.
Good luck with your repressed memories.


Tammy

Oh oh, now I am a little weary of dreaming. My shrink believes that dreaming might really help to understand why I get stuck in therapy. Maybe it is like exposure therapy, but it may be a little too much intensity from what you are telling me. At least my sleep is restful. I do consider myself lucky for that.

Dreaming is just that dreaming....Part of your dreams can be surrounding what happened during the day, but they tend to take on a life of there own. Part of them is fantasy, part is real, part is what we need or want in our lives, and part is embellishment of our day. Even dreams around our trauma aren't totally accurate.

If you fail to remember your trauma....I will tell you what my therapist told me. (He was a trauma trained in PTSD therapist) He told me that if you can't remember your trauma or parts of it, or your life.....It's your brains way of protecting you.

Your trauma may be to hard for you to handle so it just packs it away, and you can't get to it.. There are things that he/she can do to make you recover those memories......Regression therapy is one tool that they could use. But I would caution against it. You have forgotten for a reason.

It seems strange to me that your therapist is putting so much emphasis on dreams & remembering your trauma.

Occasionally I will mention a dream to my therapist but it is generally just a way of getting the discussion going. If I go through a patch of nightmares then she has in the past gotten me to track them, write them down, but hasn't spent any time really analysing them.

There is a heap of stuff on the internet about repressed/recovered memories. I think I even made a post here (if you use the search function) about trying to remember.

Personally, after 18 months of therapy, I think I've accepted that I'm not going to remember all of my trauma from 5 - 7. That the snippets, feelings, music, images, sensations are probably all I'm going to get. Accepting that was a relief in itself. And now I'm attempting to concentrate on what I do have, not what I don't.

You have every right to ask your therapist questions about his methods, why he does what he does, expectations. You have a right to research different methods of therapy and you have the right to chose another therapist if this one isn't the right one for you.